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Toxic Positivity: Do I Have It?

There is a concept that I keep hearing that piqued my curiosity. It is the concept of toxic positivity. I have heard it discussed on Clubhouse. It has been the subject of posts as I scroll on Facebook and Instagram. What exactly is toxic positivity? Do I have it? According to choosingtherapy.com, toxic positivity isContinue reading “Toxic Positivity: Do I Have It?”

The Power of a Full Charge

A dead cell phone is useless. We need to think of ourselves as cell phones. We cannot continue to give without taking a moment each day to recharge. It is not sustainable. We will crash and burn. If that happens, and it will, then who will be there to take care of our loved ones that we fight for each day?

Just Don’t Quit

How have we made it work? How has our relationship lasted for over 36 years? There is no magic or secret sauce. The answer is simply not giving up on each other. We both refuse to quit.

The Suck In Being Stuck Together

Emily needs a life outside of the house with her peers. She needs people other than mom interacting with her. At the end of the day, I want us to delight in being around each other. I want to not only love each other but like each other again. I want to find the end of suck in the stuck together spiral we have been swirling in for months.

Grief Within the Beauty

Grief is a part of this journey. You can be grateful for the child you are blessed with and grieve things that will never be. There is beauty beyond the grief and grief within the beauty.

Celebration Minus Expectation

I threw away the manual on milestones and expectations for Emily’s progress and achievements. I started to practice acceptance and release control.

Glass Children, Mom Guilt, and GRACE

Glass child is a term used to describe the sibling of a person with a disability. The word glass reflects that often others see right through the typical sibling and focus only on the person with the disability.

Don’t Tell Her She’s Just a Van

Just in case you ever get a chance to meet her, please don’t tell her she is “just a van”. She believes she is so much more.

Wonderful But Not Restful Trip

Friday morning came too soon. I woke up exhausted. Emily was to go to school on the bus. I knew there was a 50/50 chance the bus would not show up and it did not. I loaded everything into my car and off to school we drove. I started crying on the way. I was tired and had reached a point of breaking down. At that moment, I realized that the trip had been fun, but it was also a lot of work. Todd and I had cared for Emily for the past 18 days with no help. She had trouble sleeping. She had panic attacks during every aspect of hygiene from bathing to toileting. She refused to help with transitional walking. My hips and body were sore and stiff from long hours sitting in the car and sharing a bed with Emily. My self-care had taken a back seat during the trip and I was feeling the results.

Friendship and Accountability

Losing weight was always easy but keeping it off and maintaining the loss was the difficult part. It took me time to learn the secret to keeping off the weight. The first was learning to accept my emotions and allowing them instead of trying to stifle or suppress them. The second was learning that IContinue reading “Friendship and Accountability”